John Welsh: Five more blogging tips

John Welsh has come up with five more skills he suggests should be mastered before anyone starts blogging.
On his blog Theses Digital Times, John covers such topics as RSS feeds, research and how to optimise your blog to get the most readers. He has already published a list of five other important blogging skills.

Blogging not about 'mouthing off' your opinions

John Welsh asks: "When did people mistake blogging as a platform from which to mouth off their opinions?"
He has come up with: "Five online skills you must master BEFORE you start a blog - community, commenting, connectivity, collaboration and content."
It is all extremely useful advice for anyone interested in blogging.

Guido Fawkes off from Google Blogger in move to beat British judges and privacy laws

Political blogger Guido Fawkes is leaving Google's Blogger platform, partly in a move to beat the British legal system and counter privacy laws.
Guido posted today that he wanted to increase the interactivity opportunities for his "co-conspirators" and that: "This necessitates a shift to a less vulnerable more "distributed" platform, which for legal and practical reasons has to be on infrastructure not owned by enterprises that crumble at the first hint of a writ.
"Google have until now been very resilient but at the end of the day they are not going to risk their corporate neck for Guido or his co-conspirators. Google UK likes to please governments that presents a risk to Guido that he can no longer take.
"As privacy laws become ever more draconian and the government and the EU start thinking about how to suppress blogs, it seems to Guido wise to pre-emptively protect himself from legal threats to freedom of speech.
"The UK press is nowadays one of the most injuncted, litigated and censored in the West. British ISPs quite understandably don't want to risk their profits for a principle. The most straight forward way for Guido to frustrate lawyers is to make sure no element of the infrastructure of the site is within the domain of a British judge."
Guido has reported that he was recently, along with other parts of the British media, served with an injunction over emails allegedly stolen from a politician.

For Fawkes sake: moderating politico blogs

Guido Fawkes reveals today that he is going to take action to try to moderate comments on his blog. Guido Fawkes, like many political blogs, attracts foul mouthed abuse and allegations aimed at politicians which if published in a newspaper would lead straight to the libel courts.
Guido says he will not be bringing in pre-moderation or registration but says: "Things will be changing in the New Year, you will still be able to say what you like (within somewhat arbitrary inconsistent limits) without pre-moderation or registering. However there will be incentives for those who produce better quality commentary based on a new element of co-conspirator community rating.
"Good comments will be more prominently displayed, disliked comments will be less prominent. The biggest innovation is that it will be possible for readers to set their own tolerance thresholds. Poorly rated comments will be invisible to those who set their preferences accordingly.
"If you only want to see comments judged by co-conspirators to be witty, amusing or illuminating, set your threshold to "Recommended". Don't want to read foul language? Set your threshold to "U". Want to see all and any comments no matter how foul? Set your threshold to "XXX".
"If your commentary is consistently recommended your comments will automatically be more prominent in the future and may even get highlighted on the frontpage. Will it work? That is up to you."
Guido adds: "Iain Dale has had enough of window-lickers in his comments and introduced registration, he told Guido he realised he had to when he himself was no longer interested in reading the blog comments."
He also notes that pre-moderation of comments on national newspaper websites can cost a six-figure sum a year.